The Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) has raised questions over the practice of reserving the Punjab & Sind Bank (P&SB ) chairman and managing director’s job for a Sikh despite the bank’s nationalization three decades ago.
In the absence of a senior Sikh banker, the finance ministry is processing the proposal to appoint a Punjab cadre Indian Administrative Service officer to fill up the post that has been lying vacant for six months. In the past too, the government had relied on Sikh bureaucrats to fill up the post when it did not find Sikh executive directors who could be appointed P&SB CMD.
Sources familiar with the appointment process told TOI that the PMO has asked North Block to explain why the usual process of appointment could not be followed in case of P&SB too.
For other banks, a government-appointed panel headed by RBI governor conducts an interview of executive directors of all public sector banks, barring State Bank of India , and those with up to two years of service left are shortlisted for appointment as bank CMDs.
Since G S Vedi’s retirement in June, P&SB has remained without a full-time chairman and the issue of appointing a Sikh to the top post had been questioned last year too. However, in the wake of protests from the community, the government decided to go ahead with the process of looking for a Sikh bureaucrat for the job.
Bank executives said that while the bank was in safe hands, it was crucial for a bank like P&SB to have a full time CMD at the helm. The bank is the smallest public sector player, which only a few years ago emerged from strain caused by a build up of bad loans.
Even now, the entity that recently listed on the stock exchange is yet to completely shift to core banking solutions, which provides anytime-anywhere banking services, and has little to talk about when it comes to having ATMs away from its branches.
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